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What Shall It Profit America ? 

By ALEXANDER DUANE 



Reprint from the Phi Beta Kappa Key 



Gift 

lUN 13 fSSI 



Rcprijit from ihc I'hi Beta Kappa Key, May, 1921 



WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT AMERICA?* 

By Alexander Duane, M. D., Union '78 

What shall it profit America if she gain the whole world and 
lose her own soul? 

The question was prompted by a survey of our history during 
the past seven years. The story of that survey can perhaps best 
be told by linking together a few quotations from actors in that 
momentous time — quotations showing better than any description 
of mine how men wrought and felt. 

Let us hark back to the first years of the war. The German 
hordes, splendidly equipped, and drilled for this very purpose, 
had crushed their brave, but unprepared opponents. They had 
swept over and ravished with thoroughness and calculated cruelty 
brave little Belgium and northern France ; they had pushed back 
and almost annihilated the wonderful little band, the old "con- 
temptibles" of England's regular army. Temporarily checked, it 
seemed as if ultimately by sheer force of numbers and organiza- 
tion they must eventually overrun the whole of France and dic- 
tate a peace which would mean the triumph of absolutism in 
Europe and ultimately its triumph in the world. 

There went up a call for help — an appeal to civilized men to 
check this new torrent of barbarism. The call to resist was voiced 
most movingly in the words of John McCrae, familiar to you all : 

In Flanders' fields the poppies blow 
Between the crosses, row on row, 
That mark our place; and in the sky 
The larks still bravely singing fly. 
Scarce heard amid the guns below. 



♦Address given before the Upper Hudson Association of the Phi Beta 
Kappa February 25, 1921. For an account of the meeting see The Key, 
March, 1921, p. 426. 

435 



436 Tlie Phi Beta Kappa Key , May 

We are the dead. Short time ago, 
We lived, felt dawn and sunset glow, 
Loved and were loved, and now we lie 
In Flanders' fields. 

Take up our quarrel with the foe. 
To you from falling hands we throw 
The torch. Be yours to lift it high. 
If you break faith with us who die, 
We shall not rest though poppies grow 
In Flanders' fields. 

That call could not be resisted. Whole nations and peoples, as 
well as individuals, answered. In England, Scotland and Wales 
and part of Ireland, in Canada, Australia, South Africa, and 
India volunteers flocked to the standards by thousands, by mil- 
lions. The spirit in which they came and fought is finely pictured 
in verses also written by McCrae, as an answer to his own Fland- 
ers' Fields : 

O guns, fall silent till the dead men hear 
Above their heads the legions pressing on; 
(These fought their fight in time of bitter fear. 
And died not knowing how the day had gone.) 

Ye flashing muzzles pause, till they can see 
The coming dawn that streaks the sky afar; 
Then let your mighty chorus witness be 
To them and Caesar that we still make war. 

Tell them, O guns, that we have heard their call. 
That we have sworn and will not turn aside, 
That we will onward till we win or fall, 
That we will keep the faith for which they died. 

Truly these were men who, having sworn, did not turn aside ; 
truly they did keep the faith ; they fared onward till they either 
won or fell. Of such was McCrae himself who with twenty thou- 
sand other gallant Canadians at his side lies in Flanders' fields. 

Other countries, too, came to the rescue — Roumania, Italy, 
who bore a brave part and suffered enormous losses. But our own 
country held back. In spite of tremendous provocations, in spite 
of the clearest evidence on which side right and duty lay, the 
American people hesitated. The reasons for this were manifold. 
In many parts of the country, particularly in the South and West, 
remoteness and lack of authentic information produced indiffer- 



1921 llliat Shall It Profit America? 437 

ence. The fight was felt to be none of ours. This belief was 
fostered by narrow and unscrupulous politicians, who, owing to 
peculiar political conditions, had, especially in the Senate, an in- 
fluence out of all proportion to either their number or their 
ability. In other parts of the country the large foreign popula- 
tion made divisions of opinion along lines quite un-American. 
These divisions were fomented by a venomous many-headed yel- 
low journalism, which has always been insanely hostile to Eng- 
land and which, while always posing as American, has been most 
un-American in its aims and its practices. Division and doubt 
were sedulously increased by a wide-spread socialist and anarchist 
agitatioD and by an impudent German and Irish propaganda — all 
alike anti-Ally and anti-x\merican. Finally there was the pacifist 
who, horrified at the brutalities of the war, could make no dis- 
tinction between those fighting for the right and those fighting 
for the wrong, except that by a strange twist of mind he was 
invariably more tender to the latter. 

To one who loved America and was proud of her, this hesita- 
tion, this apparent apathy were disheartening indeed. We seemed 
to have reached the depth of abasement when at a great political 
convention, frenzied applause was excited by the repeated slogan 
"He kept us out of war." Happily he to whom these words were 
applied has since by a very dififerent course of action won an 
enduring title to fame. The humiliation felt at America's attitude 
in such a world crisis was finely summed in Gidding's virile lines : 

There is a land 
That once was dedicate to Liberty : 
A land that cast off kings and set slaves free, 
But when it gathered wealth and fame and power. 
And could have struck the blow that might have saved 
Throughout the world the things for which men died, 
The things for which long rows of graves were made, 
It would not strike. 

It let its own go gurgling down to death, 
And did not smite. 

Self-made, self-damned, self-governing. 
It hammers now, and smelts. 
And ever as it pounds, it sings. 
This Tubal Cain — of peace ! 
Beneath a sulphuring sky it dwells — at peace. 



438 The Phi Beta Kappa Key May 

Even from the first, however, there were braver and more 
patriotic voices, and as time went on and the truth became clearer, 
these became ever louder. As an answer to the indifferent, and the 
selfish, and the pacifist, came the ringing words of Powers, in 
which he nobly paraphrased an ignoble song : 

I did not raise my boy to be a coward, 
To bear with blood unstirred whate'er befalls, 
To skulk, or shirk, or flinch in times untoward. 
To stop his ears when need or honor calls. 

I did not raise my boy to bide in pleasure, 
When duty summons him to suffer pain ; 
To call mere easeful plenty good; to measure 
All by the paltry rule of private gain. 

I would not have him cringe when proud ambition 
Fares forth full-armed to work its lawless will, 
To use his own upon some base condition, 
Or look on weakness outraged and be still. 

Better, far better that my boy were lying, 
Foredone and shattered on the stricken field; 
Better, far better that my boy were dying, 
Where freemen, sore fore-foughten, scorn to yield. 

I love him not ? Ah me ! Too well I love him, 
To have him live at ease full-fed and whole, 
A recreant to the righteous God above him, 
A traitor to his birthright and his soul. 

Moved by such voices and thoughts as these, that represented 
her truer self, America finally entered the war. She entered late — 
almost too late for her honor — but she entered whole-heartedly. 
Party rancor was laid aside ; sectional differences were obliter- 
ated ; class distinctions forgotten. Men and women of all classes 
and ages pressed forward to offer their services in whatever way 
acceptable. On every hand, time, money, comfort, life itself were 
freely sacrificed. The splendid spirit of patriotism and devotion 
that swept over the whole land, the ideal of knightly service 
shown, were thus expressed by one who went forth eagerly at 
his countrv's call and who never came back. 



1921 JVIiat Shall It Profit America? 439. 

Long was the time we waited, 

Each act sifted and weighed, 

Stilling our growing anger. 

Sheathing the half-drawn blade, 

Patiently shaping our judgment, 

Seeking that justice be done, 

Till into our hearts the truth was borne 

How justice must be won. 

Division has passed from our councils, 

Doubt as a tale that is told; 

Clanging into the balance 

We hurl our steel and our gold. 

This is the night that our champions 

Keep with vigil and prayer ; 

This the night when our armorers 

Rivet the mail they shall wear. 

And when the arms are proven, 

The toilsome road made clear 

That leads them to the thundering lists 

To ride the barrier, 

They shall buckle on their armor. 

They shall take the shield and lance. 

And sail by the great bronze goddess 

That lights the way to France. 

And who can adequately describe the heroism of those young 
men who set forth, imbued with this spirit? The writer of the 
lines just quoted was with the 27th Division in the great battle 
in which, fighting against tremendous odds, it broke the northern 
end of the Hindenburg Line. Wounded in that battle, he, like 
many another, refused to leave the field, and pressed onward till 
he received' his death blow. \\'hen the two-days' fight was over 
the field was strewn with American bodies, every man, as an 
Australian observer said, going forward when he died. And when 
the roll was called, thirty or forty in each company reported out of 
a hundred and fifty or more who went in. As I visualized that roll 
call from the descriptions that I had received, these lines telling 
of it came to my lips : 

"Sound the assembly," "Company B 
Fall in." "Attention." Up they stood. 
Battle-worn, caked with dirt and blood, 
And answered the roll of the company. 



440 The Phi Beta Kappa Key May 

About the sergeant faced and said: 
"All present or accounted for" 
(Thirty in line, and a hundred more 
Lying out yonder wounded or dead). 

Thirty, ready to strike a blow, 
Ready and eager to fight again, 
And out on yon field a hundred men, 
Lying all with face to the foe. 

Call the roll ! Did a single son 
Of our company falter or basely yield? 
Was there a man on that glorious field 
That fought for selfish gain to be won? 

The Judge that sifts the hearts of all 
Looks down upon that field below. 
And there sees lying, row on row, 
Those who went bravely to his call. 

The pure in heart, the faithful friend, 
The tender, valiant, and the true. 
Each following his soul's vision through 
Danger and trial to the end. 

Not one with recreant spirit nor 
A man that did not singly fight 
For country, honor, truth and right. 
All present or accounted for. 

Through all the horrors of the war, above all its cruelties and 
barbarism, compensating for its enormous waste of treasure and 
life, there stand forth the heroism, the high ideals of these men ; 
there stands forth the one high, dominating thought, that for 
them and for us it was a war for righteousness. It was a war to 
fulfill Lincoln's aspiration that government of the people, by the 
people, and for the people should not perish from the earth. The 
ideals that it represented and begot, the understanding and com- 
radeship that it engendered between diflferent sections of this 
country and between this country and others that fought shoulder 
to shoulder with it, bade fair, if fully realized, to make a regener- 
ated world. So only, indeed, could such lavish outpouring of 
treasure and blood be justified. For true victory was not secured 
by the war. It could be secured only by pursuing that war to its 
legitimate conclusion. 



I92I JJliaf Shall It Profit America? 441 

Was the conclusion so pursued ? Alas, no ! As we complete 
our survey we are forced reluctantly to admit that, so far as 
America was concerned, the war ended too soon. Had it lasted 
even a little longer, the union cemented by the blood and tears 
shed in a righteous cause might have been effected. The country 
might have become united as it was not before, as it is not now. 
The ties that bound us to our great allies, England, France, Bel- 
gium, Italy, might have been so firmly established that malignant 
cunning and alien hatred could not loosen them. 

The fates willed otherwise. By a natural revulsion after such 
a supreme effort, the spirit of patriotism abated. The old party 
rancors were revived with a bitterness and a littleness almost un- 
paralleled in our history. Old sectional and class differences were 
renewed. And what we must remark with the greatest surprise 
and sorrow, the old plague spots that the war was thought to have 
obliterated broke out afresh. Again and ever more loudly has 
risen the voice of those who w^ould repudiate our share in the 
war, would attack our allies, would renounce all American ideals ; 
the voice of the pacifist, of the traitorous yellow journalism, of 
the pro-German, the Sinn Feiner, and the Bolshevist. The shame 
■of it is that to these hateful, un-American voices our politicians 
and some that we call statesmen have given subservient heed ; and, 
because many are thus misled, it has followed that the fine spirit 
of patriotism and devotion of 1918 has fast degenerated. We are 
no longer united. Our aims have become more sordid, our ideals 
lowered ; our outlook has become more and more narrow and 
selfish. Party has been put ahead of country. An ideal of gener- 
ous international co-operation which represents the things for 
which our sons fought and died, has yielded to an outworn and 
provincial policy of isolation, or rather, it would seem, to no policy 
at all. Never has the country seemed so destitute of leaders pos- 
sessed of both ability and courage ; and yet never were combined 
ability and courage more needed in order to cope with the gigantic 
problems before us. Vision is lacking, and where there is no 
vision the people perish. 

And so by this survey we have come to the point of our ques- 
tion. "What shall it profit America if she gain the whole world 
and lose her own soul ?" For if conditions thus continue, her soul, 
her national life will fast disappear. 



442 The Phi Bcia Kappa Key May 

Is this statement too pessimistic ? Is America indeed in such 
peril? To answer that let us consider the symptoms from which 
she suffers. 

First and most universal of these symptoms is discontent. This 
manifests itself in the feverish desire for wealth, and position, for 
material things the incessant pursuit of which smothers the finer 
side of life and character and too often realizes the prediction, 
"He that hasteth to be rich shall not be innocent." It manifests 
itself in the reckless extravagance of the age which spends without 
satisfaction, despising the economy for which the growing misery 
of the world so loudly calls. 

"This is the imposthume of much wealth and peace, 
That inward breaks and shows no cause without 
Why the man dies." 

A like restlessness and discontent lead to class jealousies and 
hatreds, to the labor disputes, marked by greed and selfishness on 
both sides, and — facilis descensus Averni — to the ravings of the 
Bolshevist and communist, whose program is destruction and 
whose outlook is one of unmitigated sordidness. A milder but 
perhaps equally mischievous manifestation of the same discontent 
is the itch to legislate — the futile striving to remove by a stroke of 
the pen ills and grievances that time and education alone can eradi- 
cate. 

The second symptom of the times is disloyalty — disregard of 
the laws and of that which the laws represent. Disregard, of the 
laws guarding property and person has produced the wave of 
criminal violence that has swept over the country. Disregard of 
the laws of commercial intercourse finds its expression in greed,, 
extortion, and repudiation of business obligations — practices much 
too prevalent, which, unless checked, will shake the very founda- 
tions of national prosperity and honor. Disregard of that which 
the laws represent — of America and Americanism — is found m 
many ominous forms — in the increasing propaganda and treason- 
able practices of the Sinn Feiner, pro-German, and Bolshevist, 
and in the growing indifference to the ideals represented and the 
obligations created by our participation in the war. To my mind 
a very sinister manifestation of this spirit, that should be even- 



igzi 



IV hat SJwU It Profit America.^ 443 



more disquieting to the victors than the vanquished, was seen m 
the last election. For of the enormous majority cast for the Re- 
publican side it is quite certain that a very large proportion con- 
sisted of a mass of foreigners, who, changing suddenly from one 
side to the other, voted from motives not connected with America 
at all. The great mass of Germans, that is, voted as they did 
because of their resentment at the peace treaty and their thought 
of what Germany would gain by their vote ; the Irish because they 
thought Ireland, or rather the revolting faction in Ireland would 
benefit, or because they had been so bidden ; the Italians because 
of resentment about Fiume ; the alien Bolshevists because Lenine 
and Trotsky opposed the League of -Nations. Speaking not as a 
Democrat and not as a Republican, but as an American, I feel 
it a matter of grave concern that we have in our midst millions 
of men, whose vote can be swayed by their interest in a foreign 
land or transferred at the dictates of some outside influence 
temporal or religious. 

The third symptom is what for a want of a better term I shall 
call superstition— meaning by that a persistent and intolerant 
clinging to a belief, whether religious, political, or educational, 
which is contradicted by reason or experience. The growing 
skepticism of the day has diminished somewhat the power for ill 
of religious superstition, but superstitions of the other sort are 
many and exceedingly mischievous. The Russian anarchists, we 
are told, are without belief in religion or even in ethics, as ordi- 
narily understood, but are yet dominated to a fanatical extreme by 
a political superstition which is causing untold misery to millions. 
Perhaps we pride ourselves on our superiority; yet our political 
superstitions that chain us slavishly to party and make a fetish 
of its principles have been exemplified never more strikingly than 
within the last two years. The ease with which we change our 
constitution to reverse the course of human nature may be con- 
trasted with the stubbornness with which we cling to outworn 
methods of electing a president and of registering the popular will 
as expressed by an election, or to the persistency of the belief that 
diplomats, statesmen, soldiers, sailors, and the means of national 
defense can be extemporized overnight. The latter superstition 
cost us thousands of precious lives during the war. Educational 



444 ^/''' f^^'i -^''"''^ Kappa Key May 

superstitions, especially the newer ones, have produced progressive 
degeneration of our standards, so that the country is filled with 
multitudes of the poorly informed and badly taught. From this 
fact, I suppose, springs the further superstition, peculiarly Ameri- 
can, which makes a fetish of material success and exalts it above 
aesthetic, intellectual, or even moral achievement. 

These are indeed grievous symptoms, and if, as in fact seems 
to be the case, they are growing steadily more intense, then truly 
America has to fear for her soul. Rich she may be and politically 
powerful; her body will be great and strong; but her soul, her 
national life, her honor, will have atrophied. 

What is the remedy? 

A physician when first confronted with a case showing severe 
and dangerous symptoms, must first relieve these lest the patient 
die while he is still investigating. So we, confronted with soul- 
sick America, must stoutly combat her symptoms — seeking to 
purge her of her discontents, her disloyalties, and her supersti- 
tions. For the restless search for wealth, the ostentatious display, 
the lavish expense we must substitute economy, private and public. 
A return to moderation and simplicity, making really for the bet- 
ter enjoyment of life and for the appreciation of life's higher side, 
is greatly to be sought. We must try to end class strife by 
equitable judgments, by arbitration when possible, by seeking in 
every way to improve permanently the condition of those who are 
really oppressed or in distress. Lawlessness we must put down 
with a firm hand. In business matters we must return to scrupul- 
ous honesty ourselves and enforce it in others by material and 
moral penalties. To the alien that is not of us, whether he is an 
alien in fact or an American in name, and to the selfish or craven 
politician that abets him, we must give stern proof that we will 
no longer tolerate attacks on American principles or on our allies. 
The despicable yellow journalism and the Bolshevist sheets which 
foster such attacks we must combat as we would a source of phy- 
sical contagion. We must strongly oppose the further introduc- 
tion of ignorant foreigners. Already these are too many ; and 
they have made of this country not a melting pot but, as has been 
said, a devils' cauldron. Finally we must oppose in every way 
America's many superstitions. Particularly let us give up our- 



^9^1 /r//a/ SJiall It Profit Amcnca.^ 445 

selves and combat in others the fetisli of an unswerving party 
loyalty— a fetish whose high priest is the poHtical boss. Not other- 
wise can we secure pohtical purity and real progress. 

The treatment is severe and difficult to apply. It will not suc- 
ceed unless it is kept up persistently and, in view of the organized 
opposition that will be constantly encountered, this means per- 
petual vigilance and permanent organization. Scattering attacks, 
sporadic reform will not suffice. Of this fact we have had many' 
painful demonstrations. 

But even if we constantly combat the symptoms— even if we re- 
move them for a time— shall we say that America's life is still 
secure? The true physician, while he is relieving the urgent 
symptoms of a case seeks for the cause underlying them. And 
what are the causes of the three symptoms of America's unrest, 
with, their protean manifestations ? What are the causes of all 
her discontents, her disloyalties, her superstitions? They are 
ignorance and selfishness. These two, like the giants in Bunyan's 
fable, stand barring America's wa>- when she seeks to return to her 
better self. 

And what is the remedy for these causes— the remedy that 
rightly applied will slowly but surely purge America of all her 
troubles? Need I point out to an assemblage of Phi Beta Kappa 
men that that remedy is education? Education in the best and 
highest sense of the term, it must be. No mere vocational train- 
ing, no matter how splendidly sustained by wealth of laboratories 
by practice of eye and hand will suffice. Such training may pro- 
duce the best artizans, the cleverest engineers, the acutest lawyers, 
the most accomplished surgeons, but it will not of itself remove 
the Ignorance and selfishness that lie at the root of our national 
discontents, disloyalties, and superstitions. It will minister to the 
body of America, but not to its soul. The body of America must 
be supported, and therefore vocational training must be carried 
on and with increasing perfection. But the education that will 
remove the evils afifecting America's soul must produce a higher 
type of man than one who is only vocationally perfect. The Amer- 
ican man must have the fourfold training that shall bring out to 
the full his capabilities, physical, aesthetic, intellectual, moral 
For, following the old Greek ideal, we cannot but feel that true 



446 Tlie Phi Beta Kappa Key May 

education must supply in the first place the alertness, the bodily- 
vigor, the abounding health that come from properly regulated 
universal exercise and clean, temperate living. In the second 
place, it must cultivate appreciation of the beautiful in nature and 
in art. In the third place, it must store the mind with informa- 
tion of enduring historic and Hterary value and train its faculties 
of observation, memory, and reason, so that it shall be able con- 
tinually to utilize the store it has and add to it. In the fourth 
place, it must bring out that without which the rest is but dust 
and ashes, namely the cultivation of the spirit and the establish- 
ment of character. Such an education will realize at once Juvenal's 
ideal of the "mens sana in corpore sano" and Terence's "Nil 
humanum a me alienum puto." Such an education will retain the 
grand old standards ; it will not ignore the classics any more than 
it will philosophy, or mathematics, or history, or the natural 
sciences, or literature, music, and art. Adapting itself to the man 
according to his capacity, it will bring out the highest and best 
that there is in him. Its watchwords, expressive of its fourfold 
function, will be strength, beauty, truth, righteousness. 

In some part, at least, all can and all should participate in an 
education like this. In its higher phases it can be attained by only 
a few, and these will be the leaders, guiding the nation to ever 
better and higher things and helping always to remove the ignor- 
ance and selfishness that lie at the root of all our evils. 

Is this an unrealizable dream? Is it not rather something 
earnestly to be sought, as it is devoutly to be desired? And who 
better than those present, whose ideal of education and life has 
been built on the threefold motto of our Society — Friendship, 
Morality, Literature — who better than these, I say, to realize it? 

My address ends as it began, with an appeal. 

Fellow members of the Phi Beta Kappa ! I call on you, who 
are leaders of men, to fulfill your part and duty. I call on you to 
see that America shall not in the days to come lose her own soul. 
I call on you to see that that war which we waged for righteous- 
ness shall not have been waged for naught ; that those gallant 
sons of ours who freely gave their lives that American ideals 
should not perish shall not have died in vain. 



192 1 IV hat Shall If Profit America? 

For the youth they gave and the blood they gave, 

For the strength that W3.i our stay, 

For every marked or nameless grave 

On the steel-torn Flanders way— 

We, v^ho are whole of body and soul, 

We have a debt to pay. 

For the youth they gave and the blood they gave 

We must render back the due; 

For every marked and nameless grave 

We must pay with a service true; 

Till the scales stand straight with even weight, 

And the world is a world made new.* 



44; 



*Theodosia Garri 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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020 932 316 3 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS • 

020 932 316 3' 



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